Venting anger

S. Boston residents air complaints about structures

By Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff, 5/7/2002

For more than a decade, the Big Dig has torn through Boston's bowels like a
massive municipal bellyache: The pain's been intense, but except for the
sleek Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, there's little visible evidence of
the $14.6 billion project.

That's all begun to change, now that five ventilation buildings have
started casting their gargantuan, spiky silhouettes on Boston's skyline, all
along the Central Artery's corridor.

But rather than embrace the additions to the city scape, many who face the
buildings, especially those in South Boston, are now saying they liked the Big
Dig a lot more when it was underground.

"I think they're startling and really intrusive, and they don't seem to be
of the quality elsewhere on the Big Dig," said Valerie Burns, a South Boston
resident and president the Boston Natural Areas Network, a nonprofit that
works on open and green spaces. "How can something that huge and importantly
placed slip through? I hate to say it, they look like a mistake."

More like overgrown utility closets than buildings, the ventilation
structures fulfill one essential purpose: providing power and fresh air to
nearly 4 miles of underground roadway. Costing tens of millions of dollars
each, the vent buildings, together with the ducts in the tunnels, make up the
world's largest such system.

But although the vents perform the same function, they will not look the
same.

The vent buildings under construction downtown are being masked by parking
lots or hotels. But South Boston residents have been shocked by Vent Building
5, an 18-story, monolithic concrete box rising above the waterfront district
on Summer Street that has none of the artful cover of its downtown siblings.
Even worse, it sits a stone's throw from the unfinished Convention Center,
where visitors will get their first impression of Boston, and hard by the Fort
Point Channel artists' community, which knows something about aesthetics.

"What comes to mind? A nuclear power plant?" said Becky Dwyer, a resident
of the 249 A Street artists co-op and former vice president of the Fort Point
Arts Community, peering out her window at Vent Building 5. "It's huge, way out
of scale, but it's just grey cement, and it seems to me that they could have
done something more interesting."

If she turns her head, she sees Vent Building 1, another mass of concrete
across the Channel.

When finished, Artery officials say, the two buildings will not be quite as
imposing and barren as their unfinished hulks would suggest. Interchanging
stripes of gray and beige bricks will run horizontally along the width of VB5,
they say. VB1 will have a similar scheme.

But when it comes to aesthetic enhancements, that's about it, officials
acknowledge. Between VB5 and VB1, project officials stripped $2.5 million
worth of fineries like stainless-steel caps for the stacks, and custom-built
air louvers, during a cost-cutting exercise a few years ago.

By comparison, no such cuts occurred at the vent building rising at 500
Atlantic Ave. in the Financial District. Except for an array of air intake
louvers that will sit about 50 feet off the ground in an alley, Vent Building
3 will remain invisible. This was possible because the Big Dig's engineers
were able to bury most of the structure, beside the Artery tunnel.

The property's owner, NStar, announced earlier this year that a 20-story
glass-and-limestone building will occupy the site, housing a parking garage on
the lowest level, a tony Hotel Intercontinental in the middle, and 130 luxury
condominiums on the top. The chimneys will be encased in glass boxes on the
roof.

"Because this site is so crucial, it was paramount to hide the ventilation
system," said NStar spokesman Brian Fallon, who said the hotel is the result
of 12 years of planning with the Big Dig. "That was our objective from the
beginning."

Also well-hidden will be Vent Building 4 in nearby Haymarket, which will
only show its stacks. A brick-and-granite faced parking garage will encase the
rest of the utilitarian structure.

Aware of the budgetary disparity, those in South Boston are angry that they
were never informed of the cost cuts to the buildings in their area.

Even some of the buildings' designers have said the cuts have rendered
once-elegant creations monstrosities. Hubert Murray, former chief architect
with Wallace Floyd, which did much of the vent building design work, said his
firm sought inspiration in Rome's famous Trevi Fountain for the design of VB5:
raw, organic material at the base, tapering to a triumphant stylized acme
capped in stainless steel.

That steel, he said, was largely responsible for the critical acclaim
heaped upon Vent Building 7, which shimmers at sunrise and sunset in East
Boston, where it ventilates the Ted Williams Tunnel. That building, along with
one near the FleetBank pavilion in South Boston, have been operating since
1995.

Murray says the project's managers, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, "stripped
the assets" from VB5 and VB1 because "they're in the business of building
nuclear power plants and airports, and not architecture in the midst of
humanity."

Matthew Amorello, chairman of the Turnpike Authority (which oversees the
Big Dig), said he is willing to revisit the vent building issue with an eye
toward dressing them up in a way that would please locals.

Last week, Amorello named Fred Yalouris, director of architecture and
design for the Central Artery project, to head a task force to look into the
issue.

Others from the community and advocacy groups will be named shortly.

"We're very proud of the vent buildings," Yalouris said. "We spared no
expense on the design and materials for these buildings, and we feel that
shows. Right now, people are reacting to the large concrete blocks out there.
We're asking for people to wait until they're done before they make up their
minds."

Michael Lewis, the Big Dig's project director, said VB5 seems worse than it
is because it's taken shape before the rest of the neighborhood. In years to
come, he pointed out, parcels on three sides of the building, owned by
Massport, NStar, and developer Frank McCourt, are probably going to be the
sites of large hotels, which would go a long way toward hiding VB5.

Boston is not alone in confronting the aesthetic challenge posed by
ventilation buildings.

The ventilation building for New York's Holland Tunnel rises 12 stories,
obscuring a good piece of the Hudson Riverscape. But the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey began lighting the windowless brick facade recently, to
rave reviews. And last year, a group of artists took an even more radical
tack, projecting a film onto the building for a week straight.

Amorello said he is considering similarly creative responses, such as
lighting arrays, murals, or hanging giant scrims similar to the one that
covered the State House during its recent renovations.

Dwyer suggested that the Bulgarian artist Christo wrap up the vent
buildings, as he's done to skyscrapers in other cities. Others have suggested
vines and botanicals at various points on the buildings' facades. Others still
have pinpointed the structures as the ideal location for another whale mural
by Wyland, whose work already graces a wall by the Southeast Expressway.

Murray, who appreciates the renewed interest in his buildings, is not
enamored with that last idea: "If I saw whales crawling up and down one of
these things, I would throw in the cards and slit my wrists."